Firing Drew Johnson amounts to censorship and other letters to the editors

Firing Drew Johnson amounts to censorship and other letters to the editors

August 3rd, 2013 in Opinion Letters

Firing Drew Johnson amounts to censorship

There must have been something else brewing between management and Drew Johnson. His headline "Take you jobs plan and shove it" was spot on and not "inappropriate" as you stated. Mr. Johnson probably changed it over your instructions not to do so. Censorship. Perhaps he might get a reprimand, but his job, no. Even though you tout your policy of publishing opposing views, this action certainly is an indicator of the current liberal media bias and intolerance prevalent in this nation. If Mr. Johnson would return, which probably is doubtful, he is owed an apology. After all you have given your vitriolic narrow-minded cartoonist, Bennett, carte blanche to publish his divisive art and comment that offers nothing constructive. Mr. Johnson always offered with an opposing view, a possible solution.

CHUCK ALVERSON, Etowah

Free Press editorial was inflammatory

I expect an adult even from the right side of the newspaper. Does not a moral person show respect to others, even those with whom they may disagree? What has happened to the respect for the office of the president? What happened to civil discourse? The inflamed language used on the Free Press opinion page on July 30, demeans us generally as a society and directly as southerners. Editorials need to be thought provoking and if possible, problem - solution driven, not just inflammatory rhetoric. Again, this editorial was just nasty. You owe "our" president and your readers an apology. You could have stated your reasons of opposition without being so utterly disrespectful.

BRENDA EASON, Lookout Mountain

'Free Press' not as free as bad as we had hoped

I'm thinking the Free Press isn't so free after after all. If that is really the truth of what happened, then it is chilling. I suspect someone just didn't like the man and was looking for an excuse to get rid of him.

MARY ANNE BAILEY

There is such a thing as evolution

A farmer has 10 cows, one of which produces more milk than the others. The farmer likes this about that cow and exclusively breeds her, raising calves that are also able to produce more milk. As those calves grow up to join the milk cows, the other cows are sold for slaughter and do not reproduce. Eventually, all ten of the farmer's cows produce more milk. Change has occurred in the farmer's population of cows over time. Before, nine out of ten cows produced little milk. Now, after the beneficial trait of high milk volume was selected generation after generation, all ten of the cows produce more milk. This is evolution by domestication. When such a change occurs in nature without human intervention, it is evolution. Plain and simple.

MAX MILLER, Hixson

Johnson's instability shows in his reaction

Thank you for firing an editor too angry to think clearly and communicate anything except venom and violence. Johnson's public response to his firing was typical of him. "I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most - read article." Wonder how he established that claim. He also sounds unclear as to why he was fired and maybe why so many read his article. Like many others, I read his article with the fear and disgust I feel when any unstable writer is given a forum to incite violence, fearful of the harm such a writer can do to our already battered democracy.